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InfoWorld Home / Adventures in IT / Taking a stand on taxation February 18, 2010
Taking a stand on taxation Call to action: Make your voice heard on all issues surrounding taxation Share or Email
Gripe Line reader Norman wrote in with a straightforward complaint: "I live in Pennsylvania where the sales tax in my county is 6 percent. I can understand that we are obligated to 'render to Caesar what is Caesar's' but I don't like the way many merchants add the sales tax after the postage and handling. When shipments are sent via U.S. Mail, the state then collects sales tax on U.S. postage."
This got me thinking: Griping about taxes is a time-honored tradition -- one that has caused some of our finest historical figures and authors to wield a sharpened pen. Read for yourself some notable observations about the issue at hand: Off the Record submissions
"It is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without." -- Albert Camus
"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." -- Jean Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance to Louis XIV of France
"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr." -- Will Rogers
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages." -- H.L. Mencken
"The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose." -- William Simon, 63rd Secretary of the Treasury
Rather than fume in futility, I would like to open up the floor to anyone who would like to weigh in on the issue of taxation, whether it be about the process, the premise of particular taxes, or the painful act of filing the taxes themselves.
Got gripes? Send them to christina_tynan-wood at infoworld.com.